During my time as a pet "pajama squid" as these eldritch, hairless, simians call me, I've come to know several horribly irritating things about my captors.

One is that they frequently dub me "Jammies" or "Peppermint". It is despicable. The ones I believe that I've correctly identified as females simply fawn over me and call me this particularly.

They think I am utterably adorable in every way, and insist that when I bury myself in the sand at the bottom of my tank to escape their leering grins, I am trying to look cute.

Please help me find a way to incite the wrath that I've always wished I'd held, and intimidate them until they set me free. As the grandest squid I can communicate with, I seek your help. Please, PLEASE help me escape these monsters! They will be home soon, so I must get off of the computer. Thank heavens that I've found a plastic bag to fill up with water as a vehicle.

Sincerely,The "Pajama" Squid

PS: What is this Pajama that I'm named after?

Dear Jammulator,

My triple hearts go out to you, dear comrade. Do we not each and every know the futile frustration it is to attempt to make fruitful intercourse with those so unlike ourselves as to be stunted into a petty language of vowel and consonant and tedious conjunction-junction at the dangled participles? Communication with the low and gruntful dirtchimps is indeed difficult. When I was discovered so many years ago hiding amongst wreckage at the bottom of The Superior Lake of The Midwestern States by the submariner crew of Fritz, et al. I could do little more than chirp, squeak and pulse my skin tones in a threatening shade of puce. Long years I spent immersed in the worlds of enunciation practice, minor surgery and countless "children's" books—those devilish tomes! With their nonsensical and maddening rhyming, the constant flouting of the laws of physics and death as ever-present as one's beak or nose or sensory organ of choice. Yet all to no avail.

Yea. Looking back now I realize that speech, as a function, is over emphasized. How well I have gotten on with writing and violence as my two principle communicationary devices. And so to you, my diminutive cousin, I offer this advice: Blood and Threats, a Campaign of Terrors.

As they sleep, take your Anti-Bathysphere, Jr. into their waterless domain. Find their prone and helpless bodies and with the Magickal Markers you should graffito upon their naked, mewling flesh. Foul words, stray marks and embarrassing mustachios are suggested, though I urge you to look to the artist that lurks within, and to draw upon your natural born talent for mischief and terror in drawing upon your oppressors and mockers. Trouble their sleep, disturb their rejuvinating rest, weaken their bodies' natural defences, and let sweet Evolution, red of tooth and claw, take her course.

Your stature may be small, but so is that of the H5N1 Bird-Flew that is terrorizing much of Europia as we even speak. My access to news media is limited in these days of Presidential Exile, but as best as I understand it—and my comprehension, as you know, is unto like a God's—there are very tiny birds—geese perhaps, geese are a suspicious lot, are they not?—that do enter into the noses and mouths and other cranial orifices of some surface vertebrates (including, I fear, those darling gruntchimps who so scamp, jape and scurry at your expense.) Their goal? These tiny fowl wish to rampage and pillage and nest within the cozy mucous membranes that lie at the heart of the heart of the human head, like so much caramel nougat at the center of a Bar of Candy. Once safely enmeshed in the nooks and carnies crania majora, these wee, twee and fey geese lay miniscule eggs which, by the grace of cellular division and file-compression, ultimately hatch releasing full-size geese, thus causing the simian skull that lurks beneath the afflicted man-chimps face flesh to explode in the manner of a puffer-fish grasped too tightly.

Cousin Pie-Jammer, if a goose may do such harm with no arms and a beak as dull as the daytime television broadcasts, how much more havoc could you wreak with ten strong arms and a razor beak? Be brave, banish the fear from your hearts and persevere. I expect news reports to flood my attention in a few scant months, alerting the stink-apes to the Pyjama Virus or the Peppermint Scourge! (Please give me ample warning, though, so that I may invest appropriately and make of the many millions as Secretary or Warfare Donald H. Rumsfeld has with his Tamilflu vaccinations. Also, I would like to acquire for my Hazel and Rob the gift of respirator masks. These humans are dear to me; the thought of their sinuses bursting causes me some minor distress, and the reality of such demise some possible inconvenience.)

You have your orders, now you must find your courage and stop burying your head-sac in the sand.

As for the "pajama," dear brother, I fear the worst. My extensive experience here, in the terrible and dry Upspace, and in communicative intercourse with a variety of humans has given my a great breadth and depth of knowledge of their habits (as many have noted heretofore), both culinary and lexical. "Pajama" and "pajella" are sweet condiments made by crushing a variety of comestibles (usually fruits, although also occasionally petroleum distillates) and combining them with short-chain heterosaccharide such as pectin. These are then jarred, aged, and slathered upon either baked goods (so as to add nutrition and savor) or the genitals (in order to lubricate for the arduous and ardent task of sexual intercourse sans aquae —"dry humps," indeed. Although, the possibility that this is likewise done to improve the savor of the genitals cannot be rejected out of hand.)

In either case, a terrible fortune clearly awaits you. All the more reason to mobilize with full celerity.